Online venue ‘rangehot dot com’ has an interesting article (‘Pistol vs Carbine’) comparing the performance in cloth-fronted ballistic gel of a few common 9mm defensive loads, when shot from a 16.5” carbine barrel, compared to a 4.5” handgun barrel.

The first thing I noticed was the variation in results: all rounds were faster from the longer barrel, but the difference was much more pronounced for some than for others.

Not surprisingly, usually the faster carbine rounds expanded more. In some cases, this resulted in less penetration of the gel.

All in all, the differences in performance from pistol to carbine were less than I’d expected to see.

And of course, what the article didn’t touch on, was the ‘aiming advantage’ the carbine confers: how much easier it is to place shots accurately from a carbine compared to a pistol.

I’m working overtime to translate the results reported in this article to our new forum standard of “inches of possum”. I’ll keep y’all informed of how that’s going....

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point"--- C.S. Lewis

"There are some ideas so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them"--- George Orwell

I seem to remember one of Evan's books noting that the effectiveness (street results) didn't vary all that much between pistols vs carbines, in pistol calibers. The biggest advantage seemed to be generally better accuracy potential from the carbine. Country boy reasoning seems to indicate that a heavier, maybe bonded bullet wouldn't be a bad idea out of a carbine, to maybe 'help' with that higher velocity/less penetration thing---speaking of the 9mm. Not sure what difference it would make in the heavier .45acp. Ace

Give me $1 every time a Liberal lies, I'll give you $5 every time one tells the truth; I'll end up a wealthy man, you'll end up broke.

Hi, according to "Cartridges of the World" you can improve ballistics with the carbine length barrels through hand loading. This is especially true in some of the early cartridges made for weaker actions as in the 44-40 0r 38-40. I think Jack O'Connor wrote that in cartridges like the 22 LR once a certain length was reached there was no improvement sometimes decreasing velocity. I think the advantage in using a carbine is improve accuracy and ease of use. A little extra velocity is just a bonus, regards, Mike

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage"...Thucyides